


Third Session

by lucidChthonia (liquidCitrus)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Replay Value AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-24
Updated: 2012-10-24
Packaged: 2017-11-16 22:47:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/544681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liquidCitrus/pseuds/lucidChthonia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A bit of worldbuilding reminiscence as to Aelf's third session, the world which spawned it, and what happened within.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Third Session

She was standing, looking out the window, eyes not-quite-focused on the silent trees below, in the Land of Branches and Ruin.

"That's the session everyone died," Aelfrida Smithson said. "Let's see..."

\----

It was my third session, coming off the session I half didn't even remember with so many glitches you could back up a septic tank with them. Then I entered this one, still not quite knowing what I was doing but having enough of a suspicion from the vets of the previous session (which I half believed I hallucinated) that I knew at least vaguely what was coming.

Far's I know from the stories of the kid who'd been put in the Sprite, the one that failed, they lived in a world with interstellar exploration and working teleportation. Sburb decided to kill this civilization, not by meteors, but by disease, as that was the most efficient way to get rid of them. More specifically, a hemorrhaging disease with an extremely long incubation time, on the order of weeks. So, according to the sprite children, the meteors apparently fell and the people dispatched to examine them apparently assumed they were fine, didn't properly biologically quarantine everything that fell from the sky, and then went home to their families, spent time in the shops, visited people they knew through the commercial transportalizer network.

And then they began falling ill.

It wasn't a quick death, it was a slow and torturous one, I know that much. Just one more stain on the soul of the Developer who thought this particular method of civilization-extermination was worth coding and perpetuating. But I digress.

The civilization did not collapse quickly, it was a slow and increasingly panic-striken collapse. I came into the session knowing as little as I did because I was placed right on the roof with the meteors and an Entry item already poised in my hands - a glove, to be donned and curled into a fist and raised into the air - and it was only later, in the days and weeks after I began playing as the Maid of Space, that I had the barest of inklings what was going on. But it involved riots, and speeches, and quarantines, and the collapse of basic infrastructure as too many became ill to keep the stores running and the trash picked up. And I knew that the game was something that one would play to escape, but the originals didn't - they believed it was one of the last things they would do together, as they did not know how long they had to live, and as their civilization died around them.

The original players were unaccountably immune, assuming they'd escaped the plague by entering the Medium, so they played the game. Got pretty far in, actually. And then their Time player died, unaccountably, in the alpha timeline, and the remaining players were devastated, attempted to pull together to finish the session, and failed. This is what I heard from a young man of fourteen, the same age as I was. He spoke in quiet, sad words, and drew pictures of the people he thought were important in his life, that I might remember and recognize them.

It wasn't until about six weeks in that those of us who had Replayed into the session realized two things: one, that the disease had been seeded on most of the Veil meteors ahead of time. And two, that we weren't immune. It was an oversight. A stupid one, one that was apparently generated by the fact that the Replaying function had been bolted onto Sburb without so much as a consult with the rest of the Game. But the original players had immunity bred into their code, the Game's safeguard to prevent them from sickening and dying far before their time, and those of us who were brought in to pick up the pieces were not.

It was our Sage of Heart that went first, feeling unaccountably ill one afternoon and taking to bed, weakening and dying as we attempted to juggle questing and keeping vigil at his bedside. We'd planned, at that point, to use the Quest Beds where possible. And then the Page of Flow, and then the Scout of Hope, and then the Witch of Time and the Mage of Mist.

And then the next thing I knew there was nobody left standing.

I was the last one to admit defeat, we were still talking with each other through the chat clients, trying to figure out who would do what and whether anyone was still strong enough to do anything useful in the Game, I had portals so I was trying to keep up with everyone, help where I could. Hell, I even managed to start freestyling Space to support my body, though it didn't work especially well because I ran out my pluck so quickly in the process. But one day my limbs just stopped cooperating, and the Sage hadn't responded for two days - I knew he was at least /sleeping/, but... well. I know now that he died.

The Page and the Scout followed shortly after.

I'm pretty sure the Witch and the Mage were in love, for whatever reason. Not that I knew - two Cryptics doing what Cryptics do best, making it absolutely impossible for anyone to figure out exactly what was happening around and between them, and I there on the Land Bed. With the pain slowly spreading in my guts - if it knifed into my lungs that would be the end of me, I knew that much - and the fever scrambling my brain, I had no idea what to think.

And then she told me he was dead. A planet over. A day ago.

So there was me, and there was the Witch on the bed in her Spire crying silently, and I burnt Pluck portalling over to her to the point where I needed to rest for nearly two hours afterwards before I could do anything else, and then she was dead and I burnt my pluck bar to the bottom again and again, following the quietly chirruping sparrows to the rock, one arm thrown over her slowly cooling corpse.

And then I was /there/ and I - I spent the last of my energy lifting her to the rock. There was the first blinding flash of light of Ascension, and then someone put an arm around me. Whispered to me that it would be all right. And I felt nothing so much as /relief/ that I had done it, that someone in the session would survive to carry on even if I didn't. I wasn't sure if I was imagining the arm. I didn't care.

And then I fell asleep.

The next thing I remember is Arising.

The Witch and I completed that session alone. We collected the pendants. Did the usual grinding. Bred the frogs, played through the entire game by ourselves. I'll never forget her. I've lost track of her long since, I don't know where she is, but I'll never forget her.

...and Ross, if you ever get the opportunity to pick how you'd die? Don't pick illness.


End file.
